Many different types of card games have been proposed in an attempt to provide a game that requires skill and strategy and that is exciting and challenging. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,071,247 to Breslow discloses a card game of a semi-political nature which employs a deck of cards having a total of seventy-two cards. The seventy-two cards are divided into a set of seven flag cards, each of which has the representation of a flag of a particular country on its face. A set of general cards is also provided for each of the countries represented on the flags. The general cards associated with each country have numbers on the faces thereof indicating the order of rank of the respective general cards in each set. A plurality of additional cards is also provided. A portion of the cards in the deck is dealt to the players, and according to the rules of play, players can attempt to improve their hand by discarding cards from their hand and picking new cards from the remaining stack of cards. The order of rank of the various nations is determined according to the order in which the flag cards are played, the first played flag card representing the highest order nation and the last played flag card representing the lowest ranking nation. Thereafter, players play the general cards in their hand in an attempt to win tricks. The player who plays the general card of the highest ranking nation wins the trick, and if two players play general cards of the same rank, the winner of the trick is the person playing the general card having the highest ranking numerical indicia on its face.
In another game, U.S. Pat. No. 4,480,840 to Chang, a deck of cards which includes two kinds of cards, celestial cards and terrestrial cards, is employed. The celestial cards are divided into three different suits (the sun suit, the moon suit and the star suit), and the terrestrial cards are also divided into three suits (the club suit, the bamboo suit and the pine suit). The six suits are ranked according to a particular hierarchy. The cards are used to play a game of Chinese poker according to a set of rules set forth in the patent.
There is also the known game of "UNO" which is played with a deck of cards consisting of 108 cards. Nineteen of the cards numbered zero through nine are blue in color, nineteen of the cards numbered zero through nine are green in color, nineteen of the cards numbered zero through nine are red in color, and nineteen of the cards numbered zero through nine are yellow in color. The deck also includes eight cards marked "Draw Two", two of which are blue, two of which are green, two of which are red, and two of which are yellow; eight cards marked "Reverse", two of which are blue, two of which are green, two of which are red, and two of which are yellow; and eight cards marked "Skip", two of which are blue, two of which are green, two of which are red, and two of which are yellow. Also, the deck of cards includes four cards marked "Wild" and four cards marked with the designation "Wild Draw Four". Each player is dealt seven cards, and the remaining cards are placed face down to form a draw pile. After the first card is turned over from the draw pile each player in turn must play a card from his hand by matching either the color, the number, or the word description of the last played card. If a player cannot match a card, he must draw cards from the draw pile until he obtains a card that he can play.
In a game that is known in China and termed "Choh, Daih, Di", players utilize a standard deck of cards which consists of fifty-two cards divided into thirteen sets of four cards each.
While the foregoing games do provide a certain amount of amusement and entertainment, the amount of skill and strategy involved in playing the game is rather limited. As a consequence, there exists a need for a card game that requires skill and strategy but which is exciting, interesting, and not complicated to play, thereby appealing to an audience that includes children as well as adults.
There also exists a need for a game that provides an element of unpredictability for creating surprises and for lessening the intensity of the game. In other types of game which do not employ wild cards, the players can readily predict the strength of the cards in their hands by keeping track of the cards played. Thus, those games can be quite intense in that players know when they will be able to prevail with a particular hand.
The use of wild cards changes all of that because a player is never really certain that the cards he has in his hand are higher than the cards in the hands of the other players. As a result, an element of surprise always exists, and the game tends to be more exciting and less intense.
There also exists a need for a game that provides additional incentive to the players to avoid losing and to seek to win. In many types of games, the rules are such that the loser of the game is given some benefit or advantage over the other players in subsequent games in order to make the game more fair. However, in reality, things are not always fair, as is recognized by the often used saying "who said life is fair".
By providing a game that affords advantages to the winner and disadvantages to the loser, the stronger tend to get stronger while the weaker tend to get weaker. Thus, the players are presented with quite a challenge. The loser of a particular hand has great incentive to avoid continually losing because of the disadvantages associated with losing and because additional losses will set him back further. Moreover, with the advantages that are afforded to the winner, the loser of a hand is challeged to start winning so that he can catch up. In the same manner, the winner of a particular hand has incentive to continue winning and avoid losing.
It would also be desirable to provide a game having the foregoing features and having a Chinese background or theme.